The seismic behaviour of many art objects and obelisks can be analysed in the context of the seismic response of rigid blocks. Starting from the pioneering works by Housner, a large number of analytical studies of the rigid block dynamics were proposed. In fact, despite its apparent simplicity, the motion of a rigid block involves a number of complex dynamic phenomena such as impacts, sliding, uplift and geometric nonlinearities. While most of the current strategies to avoid toppling consist in preventing rocking motion, in this paper a novel semi-active on-off control strategy for protecting monolithic art objects was investigated. The control procedure under study follows a feedback-feedforward scheme that is realised by switching the stiffness of the anchorages located at the two lower corner of the block between two values. Overturning spectra have been calculated in order to clarify the benefits of applying a semi-active control instead of a passive control strategy. In *Manuscript Click here to download Manuscript: Manuscript.docx Click here to view linked References

The seismic behaviour of many art objects and obelisks can be analysed in the context of the seismic response of rigid blocks. Starting from the pioneering works by Housner, a large number of analytical studies of the rigid block dynamics were proposed. In fact, despite its apparent simplicity, the motion of a rigid block involves a number of complex dynamic phenomena such as impacts, sliding, uplift and geometric nonlinearities. While most of the current strategies to avoid toppling consist in preventing rocking motion, in this paper a novel semi-active on-off control strategy for protecting monolithic art objects was investigated. The control procedure under study follows a feedback-feedforward scheme that is realised by switching the stiffness of the anchorages located at the two lower corner of the block between two values. Overturning spectra have been calculated in order to clarify the benefits of applying a semi-active control instead of a passive control strategy. In

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The performance of a monitoring system for civil buildings and infrastructures or mechanical systems depends mainly on the position of the deployed sensors. At the current state, this arrangement is chosen through optimal sensor placement (OSP) techniques that consider only the initial conditions of the structure. The effects of the potential damage are usually completely neglected during its design. Consequently, this sensor pattern is not guaranteed to remain optimal during the whole lifetime of the structure, especially for complex masonry buildings in high seismic hazard zones. In this paper, a novel approach based on multi‐objective optimization (MO) and genetic algorithms (GAs) is proposed for a damage scenario driven OSP strategy. The aim is to improve the robustness of the sensor configuration for damage detection after a potentially catastrophic event. The performance of this strategy is tested on the case study of the bell tower of the Santa Maria and San Giovenale Cathedral in Fossano (Italy) and compared to other classic OSP strategies and a standard GA approach with a single objective function.